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'Tis strange how greedy love is in its early days of the past from which it has been excluded, how jealous sometimes of the point of contact with other lives in the unknown years which have gone to make up the rungs of the ladder of life. I was never tired of hearing of her childhood on the braes of Raasay: how she guddled for mountain trout in the burn with her brother Murdoch or hung around his neck chains of daisies in childish glee. And she-- Faith, she drew me out with shy questions till that part of my life which would bear telling must have been to her a book learned by rote. Yet there were times when we came near to misunderstanding of each other. The dear child had been brought up in a houseful of men, her mother having died while she was yet an infant, and she was in some ways still innocent as a babe. The circumstances of our journey put her so much in my power that I, not to take advantage of the situation, sometimes held myself with undue stiffness toward her when my every impulse was to tenderness. Perhaps it might be that we rode through woodland in the falling dusk while the nesting birds sang madrigals of love. Longing with all my heart to touch but the hem of her gown, I would yet ride with a wooden face set to the front immovably, deaf to her indirect little appeals for friendliness. Presently, ashamed of my gruffness, I would yield to the sweetness of her charm, good resolutions windwood scattered, and woo her with a lover's ardour till the wild-rose deepened in her cheek. "Were you ever in love before, Kennie?" she asked me once, twisting at a button of my coat. We were drawing near Manchester and had let the postillion drive on with the coach, while we loitered hand in hand through the forest of Arden. The azure sky was not more blue than the eyes which lifted shyly to mine, nor the twinkling stars which would soon gaze down on us one half so bright. I laughed happily. "Once--in a boy's way--a thousand years ago." "And were you caring for her--much?" "Oh, vastly." "And she--wass she loving you too?" "More than tongue could tell, she made me believe." "Oh, I am not wondering at that," said my heart's desire. "Of course she would be loving you." 'Twas Aileen's way to say the thing she thought, directly, in headlong Highland fashion. Of finesse she used none. She loved me (oh, a thousand times more than I deserved!) and that was all there was about it. To be ashamed of her love o
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